{"id":57150,"date":"2025-12-01T14:55:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T14:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/57150\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T14:55:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T14:55:07","slug":"great-neck-teens-gather-over-50-volunteers-for-udalls-cove-cleanup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/57150\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Neck teens gather over 50 volunteers for Udalls Cove cleanup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<img width=\"1200\" height=\"1196\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/IMG_6461.jpg\" class=\"crop-center wp-post-image\" alt=\"Over 50 people participated in a cleanup of Udalls Cove, according to high school junior Joseph Shemesh.\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"  \/>\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Over 50 people participated in a cleanup of Udalls Cove, according to high school junior Joseph Shemesh. <\/p>\n<p>Photo provided by Joseph Shemesh<\/p>\n<p>More than 50 volunteers participated in a shoreline cleanup at <a href=\"https:\/\/dec.ny.gov\/places\/udalls-cove-and-ravine-natural-resource-area\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Udalls Cove<\/a> on Sunday, Nov. 23, following the efforts of two high school juniors who helped promote the initiative. According to Joseph Shemesh, one of the teens who coordinated the event, a representative of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.udallscove.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Udalls Cove Preservation Committee<\/a> said the cleanup was \u201cthe biggest contribution they had so far.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Many of the volunteers were teens, young families and Boy Scouts, Shemesh said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUsually, it\u2019s like adults doing these things,\u201d Shemesh said. \u201cSo to have a bunch of younger families just contributing and loving it \u2013 it was pretty great.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Udalls Cove is an inlet of Little Neck Bay, part of Long Island Sound, between the Douglaston and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.longislandpress.com\/2025\/11\/24\/great-neck-plaza-art-exhibit\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Great Neck<\/a> peninsulas.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The cleanup focused on removing plastic that washes ashore in Udalls Cove under the supervision of Walter Mugdan, head of the Udalls Cove Preservation Committee. Shemesh said Mugdan explained that plastic from storms travels through sewers and \u201cgets caught up in all these bushes\u201d along the shoreline.<\/p>\n<p>Volunteers spent about three hours gathering \u201ctiny bits of plastic\u201d along with larger items such as cups, Shemesh said. Mugdan also provided environmental information during the event, Shemesh said, including how the debris has changed over time. He said Mugdan told participants that, since plastic bags were banned in New York, the litter now consists mostly of smaller pieces that are harder to collect. Shemesh said Mugdan also showed volunteers osprey nests, swallow nests and crab shells, and explained how he builds structures for the birds to live in.<\/p>\n<p>Shemesh and Shirel Uzan, both Great Neck residents and high school juniors, helped spearhead the effort. Shemesh attends Ramaz Upper School in Manhattan and Uzan attends North Shore High School in Great Neck.<\/p>\n<p>Participants also turned the cleanup into a friendly competition. \u201cWe even had some competitions,\u201d Shemesh said. \u201cWho could find the weirdest thing in the trash? There were some remote controls found, pumpkins.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Shemesh said they publicized the event through flyers and a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.longislandpress.com\/2025\/11\/12\/great-neck-kamran-hekmati\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Great Neck Estates<\/a> group chat.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe want to get a lot of younger families to help contribute to a community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over 50 people participated in a cleanup of Udalls Cove, according to high school junior Joseph Shemesh. Photo&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[30905,3242,7946,9,24,63,122,124,123,4730,30906],"class_list":{"0":"post-57150","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-beach-cleanup","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-great-neck","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-nyc","14":"tag-queens","15":"tag-queens-headlines","16":"tag-queens-news","17":"tag-teens","18":"tag-udalls-cove"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}